POTTSVILLE —When Michael Perry, The Courier’s 2013 Tri-County boys basketball player of the year, began playing basketball in the third grade, it wasn’t out of love for the sport. Few would have guessed he would grow to be such a valuable asset to the Apaches’ basketball program.

“Football was my first love. I didn’t want to touch a basketball,” he said. “What really changed it was my mom begging me and begging me to play. Of course, I ended up loving it.”

Perry said he wasn’t a natural, though. When he first started, he had one skill — he could steal the ball.

“I had one job. I’d steal the ball and pass it to someone else. I used to steal it and then run down the court like it was a football field,” he said.

Funny that his first skill is the one that sealed the 2013 Class 4A state championship game against the Pine Bluff Dollarway Cardinals at Little Rock’s Barton Coliseum. With 12 seconds remaining in the game, Perry made a steal, drew a foul and put the Pottsville up 54-50 for the victory.

Apaches head coach Shane Thurman said that sort of “big-moment” style of play is exactly what makes Perry such a special player.

“He always comes up with big plays at exactly the right moment,” Thurman said. “He doesn’t shy away from the big moment. He is at his best when the game is on the line.”

Pottsville football head coach Bryan Rust said the same thing when Perry was voted the 2012 Tri-County football player of the year. Perry has been voted for that award for two years running.

Perry led his team with 18 points per game, three steals and three rebounds. Perry was also named to the 4A all-state and 4A-4 all-conference teams, and was selected as the 4A state tournament’s most valuable player.

“It’s an amazing honor,” Perry said. “I just try and give the glory to God. I just keep doing that and he just keeps coming through for me. I try to stay focused and it keeps paying off. I’m so thankful to everyone for giving me this award and to my coaches and especially my parents and my friends.”

With his senior year still ahead of him, Perry has had an impressive career but more impressive is that he does so while maintaining a 4.0 grade points average.

“Michael puts the student back in student-athlete,” Thurman said. “He works as hard at his studies as he does at his athletic endeavors.”

Perry stays in the weight room during the baseball season, despite repeated attempts by baseball coaches to recruit him. He said he’d rather focus on getting prepared for football and basketball.

“Right now I’m just doing whatever I can to get bigger, faster and stronger for next year,” he said.

Kaitlin Meador

DOVER — When Lady Pirates senior Kaitlin Meador was voted the 2013 Tri-County girls basketball player of the year, Dover girls head coach Irvin Fairfield took time to describe her style of play.

“She’s just a super kid,” he said. “If she has a downfall it’s that she’s too nice and too good.”

Fairfield went on to describe Meador as unselfish with the basketball — a pass-first sort of player. According to him, she didn’t begin to stand out until she began to shoulder more responsibility.

“She was always too unselfish with the basketball,” he said. “She finally realized that for her team to be successful, she had to take more of the load on herself and look to score more.”

Meador led her team in scoring with 12.7 points per game, four steals and three assists. She shot 75 percent from the free-throw line and 41 percent from the field. Meador was named to the 4A all-state team and voted by coaches in the 4A-4 Conference as an Arkansas High School Coaches Association (AHSCA) All-Star nominee.

“She does so many things well,” Fairfield said. “She turned into one of better 3-point shooters and a good rebounder. She was just a good all-around player. It will be a big void with her leaving. It will take two or maybe even three people to fill that void to replace.”

Meador said a big part of her success came from Fairfield’s coaching. Meador was more interested in track and field and said it was her parents who made her play basketball in the third grade.

“I was all right,” she said. “But when coach Fairfield started pushing us hard enough, that made me a better player. If he has his mind set on something, you need to do it. It may not seem good right then, but it always works in the long run.

“Now that I’m out of practice, I realize how much it helped. He didn’t only teach us about basketball. He taught us how to work hard and about teamwork, and that’s something I can take with me the rest of my life.”

The Pirates ended their season 21-6 with a loss to Gentry in the first round of the state tournament, but not before winning the 4A-4 district tournament title. Meador said ending her senior year with a loss was disappointing, but she was still proud of her team’s efforts.

“We definitely could have played better,” she said. “But winning district kind of made up for it.”

While Meador may have played her last game at the high school level, she emphasized that the lessons she learned were invaluable.

“It taught me to have a good attitude against adversity,” she said. “When we weren’t doing good, and I could see it, I’d just try and step it up. I didn’t really think of it as not being selfish. Coach Fairfield demanded so much that you really had to be that way.”

As for her thoughts on being voted by Arkansas River Valley coaches as the player of the year, Meador was brief.

“It’s pretty awesome,” she said. “There were a bunch of girls to choose from. I never expected something like this, really.”